


Losing Control

by shadowkat67



Series: Angel The Series - Season 5- Episode Reviews [9]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Review, Episode: s05e02 Just Rewards, Gen, Literary References & Allusions, Meta, Reviews
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-10-10
Updated: 2003-10-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:54:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22398151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Summary: Meta/Review of Angel Episode Just Rewards
Series: Angel The Series - Season 5- Episode Reviews [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1612354





	Losing Control

_To have Control, that’s all that anyone really wants. Isn’t it?_ – Hainsely, Just Rewards. ATS 5.2

Control over our bodies, our emotions, our environment, our careers, our love lives, our entertainment, our world. An essential part of the human condition is the constant struggle and/or desire for control.

Sitting here on a gray Friday morning, sipping chamomile tea to hopefully reduce the negative side-effects of psuedoephredrine hydrochloride, which was in my allergy medication, I’m all too familiar with the desire for control. At the moment I just want it over my own body. If you’ve ever had a bad reaction to psuedoephredine, you know what I mean. For those who haven’t? It’s akin to having someone fire all your nerve endings at the same time or having drunk over fifty cups of coffee. The world starts to overwhelm, you can’t sleep, you tongue feels leaden with a slight bitter after-taste, and you have a tendency to over-react emotionally to things that you’d normally ignore. Every little thing feels like nails scraping across a chalk board. This reaction started on Thursday. I didn’t realize it was a reaction the psuedoephredine until today – after I took the medication again last night. Also my mother mentioned that heart patients are advised against having anything with psuedoephredine – it’s an adrenaline booster. This is why I don’t take Claritan and most nasal decongestants. I’ve had the reaction before. The feelings produced are very similar to anxiety. Normal Benadryle doesn’t have it. But the Allergy/Sinus Headache version does – it’s a nasal decongestant. Note to self – check all drugs for psuedoephredine before taking them.

Loss of control. We spend our lives attempting to fight that. Some of us believe this is a futile effort that we do not have control over our lives, our fates, or our destiny’s. This philosophy is called Determinism. Determinants believe our lives are determined by outside factors beyond our control – such as biology, genetics, cultural environment. Others believe we do have control over our lives. Complete control. I dated a guy in college who believed this. He believed that we could if we concentrated hard enough – control our bodies, our emotions, our own destiny. That very little was beyond our control. The name for this philosophy escapes me. But it sounds very Nietzchian.

Whether we are Determinants or Nietzchians, we spend our lives struggling for control. Yet no matter how hard we struggle, control is often snatched from our grasp.

Currently, I feel as if I have very little to no control over my life. And that is something I despise. While I would not describe myself as a control freak, I do fear losing control. As a child, my friends and I used to fight over whose house we would play at – because that would determine what game we played. If I played at my friend Debbie’s house, we would play fashion show, if we played at my house – some sort of fantasy/adventure game. As an adult, lack of control comes in different forms – one is physical. For instance, I have what is known as an essential tremor. This is similar to what Katherine Hepburn had, except my tremor only affects my hands and arms, while Katherine’s affected her whole body. The tremor ranges from something that is barely visible, just a small tremor, to rigorous shaking. As I get older, the worse it gets and the less control I appear to have over its occurrence. When I get really nervous or upset, my hands will shake so badly that I am unable to hold a coffee cup or type on a computer or pick up a fork. I have to sit calmly for a while until the emotion passes and with it the tremor. The tremor also affects my right hand more than my left – which is annoying since I happen to be right handed. I’ve gotten in the habit of telling people what the tremor is upon meeting them – as a means of staving off the inevitable looks and questions. People assume I’m just nervous or have a disease. In interviews, I keep my hands rested in front of me and make certain I don’t hold any cups or pens. According to my neurologist, there is now medication to treat and control tremors – we just have to make sure we know what it is first. Over the years, people have worked to find a way of controlling a previously uncontrollable nervous condition.

The reality show Extreme Makeover – depicts people’s attempts to change and control how they are perceived by the outside world. If I can control how I look, I can control how others perceive me, and possibly make them like me more. Plastic surgery, diets, implants, hair stylists, and make-up are just a few of the things we use to control how we are perceived. Advertisers spend lots of money trying to convince us to change others perceptions of how we look – to care how we are perceived. They also spend lots of money persuading us that one look or image is better than another. For example – being thin and blond is better than voluptuous and brunette so join Weight Watchers and get Oreal’s new hair dye.

I just finished an internship with a marketing promoter and Hollywood producer – whose main occupation is manipulating perception. He struggles on a daily basis to control how others perceive certain products and events. He doesn’t lie, he embellishes, he spins, he manipulates the information. We orchestrated a celebrity party at a famous Hotel last Friday, numerous celebrities were invited, at least five had agreed to show up. In reality only two did and they showed up forty-five minutes apart, never coming in contact. The promoter had the party filmed. Later in the editing room, he edited the footage so that it appeared the two celebs that did show not only interacted at the party, but were incredibly close friends. He also changed the timing of the party. In real time the party took place between 5-8pm before a film premiere. In the video he produced, it took place between 2-5am after the film premiere. He could not control the party, but he could control how the party was presented to the world at large.

On the internet, right now, at this very moment, millions of people are jockeying for control. A conversation is all about the struggle for control – who controls the subject matter and direction of the conversation. And we all get frustrated when the control slips from our grasp or when we can’t change someone’s opinion or taste or view on a topic.

This week’s Angel episode dealt with all of these issues. Each character represented a different struggle for control and how that struggle is lost or all too briefly won.

Angel – believes he has control of Wolfram and Hart. He also believes he has control over himself and his own demons. But we wonder who has the control here? Is Angel controlling W&H or is W&H controlling Angel? How much control does the CEO or President of a major corporation really have? Arnold S. just became Governor of California. He believes he can cancel a car tax with an executive order and immediately right all the problems of the state. Yet California according to the News is a complex state with a divisive legislature. And a huge deficit. The Governor has less control than Arnold knows. Similar to Angel – who has taken over a huge multi-dimensional law firm – he believes he can change it, control it, snap of his fingers, yet each week he gets a new wrinkle from the subversive field operatives of last week’s episode to the Gnarchar demon and the annoying Hainsely.

Gunn – believes because he now has expanded his knowledge of things, he has control. Anyone who has ever gone to law school knows how deluded this notion really is. Knowing the law does not provide you with control over it. You may be able to manipulate a few things here and there and it might give you a leg up over those who haven’t taken the time and energy to study it – but it certainly doesn’t provide you with greater control. Nor does knowledge for that matter. He comes up with a solution to wound Hainsely – but it doesn’t solve the problem. Anymore than last week’s solution to get Fries off, ultimately solved the problem – all it did was put it on hold.

Wesely – is similar to Gunn in this matter. He too believes knowledge extends to him a certain level of control. If he can manipulate mystical forces – he can control them. If he understands them, he has control. Just as Hainsely believes that he controls the dead, because he can mystically manipulate the dead. Or Jasmine believed that as long as she could manipulate the minds of her followers, she controlled the world.

Fred – asserts control through science. She figures stuff out. Not unlike the doctors who assert their power over life and death. We found a vaccine for measels – so we asserted control over measels. Unless of course someone fails to take the vaccine. Science makes men feel like Gods, through a formula or scientific procedure they can unravel the mysteries of the universe – determine how to blow up millions without damaging a single building or how to cure millions. Yet, the more mysteries we unravel, the more that pop up in their place and the more our control over our world appears to be a fragile illusion put in place by Circus owner to keep himself entertained. For instance, in the hell dimension Fred fell into way back in Season 2 Ats – science got her there but it could not get her out.

Lorne – is the media promoter/producer. He controls how things are seen or presented. How we sense something. He can tell through a song how someone feels, whether they are evil or good. Yet, as we saw last season, it’s easy to fool this talent, fiddle with the mojo. And who controls Lorne’s perceptions, Lorne’s desires? Does he really have that much control over how he perceives things?

Spike – is the one member of the team with no illusions of control. The writers have literally done the worst thing they can think of to this character – remove his ability to interact with matter, to be of use, he is a phantom, a ghost, who is stuck to W&H. Spike doesn’t even have the ability to leave LA. He is also the only member of the team that did not choose to join W&H. He is trapped there. Can you imagine the sheer frustration of not being able to control your own physicality? Of having no control over each slippage to hell? It’s a bit like having a debilitating disease or a nervous condition. Spike who is the most physical of characters – is forced to deal without the ability to be physical.  
Spike oddly enough is on the opposite side of the spectrum from Angel, who appears to be in control of everything, while Spike is in control of nothing. Yet, is this true? What is Angel in control of? What is Spike?

Spike chose his own soul. So no happiness clause. Spike controlled getting it.  
Angel had his soul thrust on him. He did not choose it. He had no control over getting it and he has limited control over losing it. He can prevent its loss, but not without difficulty.  
Spike chose to save the world with Buffy.  
Angel wanted to save the world with Buffy but she turned him down.  
Spike knows he is stuck with W&H. Angel believes he chose this and is in control.

In a way Angel has even less control than Spike does. Yet to the eye – it appears the opposite. The illusion fools them both.

As I slowly force my way up from the bowels of a bad drug reaction, I realize how precious the notion of control is to me. How frustrating it is to be without it. Particularly in regards to my own body. Hainsely is right, we do want control. Some would do anything for it. Control over our own lives, our destinies, even others destinies. We spend hours on posting boards and internet chat rooms attempting to persuade others to see things, whether they be political or cultural, through our eyes, to give us some sort of validation perhaps? Or maybe to give us a sense of control over the world around us, even as it continues to allude us elsewhere.


End file.
